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Pussy Riot’s Yekaterina Samutsevich says that there is still a chance that jailed bandmates Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina may be released before the end of their two year sentences. Via Raw Story:

“I think if we manage to carry out a legal defence at a high level, there is a chance that they’ll come out earlier, earlier than two years,” Samutsevich said a year after the band yelled out a political protest song critical of President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.

The two women are serving two-year sentences for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in harsh prison camps in the western regions of Perm and Mordovia.

The case remains a thorn in the side of Putin, Samutsevich said, speculating that political pressure could build up to free the women ahead of next year’s much-vaunted Winter Olympics in Russia’s southern city of Sochi.